The driver never took responsibility for the crash that killed Jeff Ellery Engels on Feb. 7, 2023, according to the case’s prosecutor and the victim’s family.
After denying a motion from 62-year-old James Preston Fulton’s new counsel to blame his previous counsel for the conviction, Judge Alan Yudkowsky sentenced Fulton to 19 years and 4 months in state prison.
In March, it took the jury about an hour of deliberation to decide Fulton was guilty of crimes that Deputy District Attorney Shea Sanna described as “egregious.”
Fulton was found guilty of making a U-turn on Sierra Highway late at night, directly into the path of Engels, who was riding his motorcycle on the rural stretch of road, north of Santa Clarita city limits, when the collision occurred. The evidence indicated Fulton dragged the vehicle for a quarter-mile, after the collision tore off the driveshaft of his truck, never returning to the scene and instead hiding the truck at 9927 Soledad Canyon Road.
The jury also found Fulton guilty of tracking down and beating up one of the state’s witnesses against him 13 days after the crash, a man who had known Fulton for several years.
“If any case on these charges deserved the maximum, it was this case,” Sanna said in a phone call Friday, when asked about his sentencing recommendation for more than 30 years.
“He didn’t show any remorse for what happened,” he said. “And in fact, he went up to the sister of the victim right before the jury came back with their verdict, and told her that he is sorry for her loss, but he wants her to know that he didn’t do it.”
After waiting for years for the trial, Karen Engels said she had nothing to say to Fulton when he confronted her outside the court room, just prior to the jury’s reading of the verdict.
“I just … I didn’t say a word,” she said, describing the encounter. “My skin was crawling, but it’s like, he had three years to apologize, you know, and then you pull that?”
She went on to describe Sanna as a hero for his work on behalf of her brother, for garnering the verdict and the time he spent walking her and her family through the process with kindness and patience.
She said she had waited years for something to happen, which started not long after Sanna took over the case earlier this year, based on court records.
Fulton felt the opposite about his counsel, filing a motion after his conviction through a new attorney, Sharon Beth Marshall, assailing the work of his previous counsel, Michael J LaCilento, a Corona-based family and criminal law attorney.
Neither Marshall nor LaCilento returned a phone call Friday regarding the case.
Fulton filed a sworn statement that he didn’t know he was going to testify until the morning he was on the stand, and that he was not prepared.
Marshall’s arguments in the motion for a new trial contended that Fulton did not receive a fair trial due to a claim that LaCilento’s counsel was ineffective. It included statements from Fulton and a paralegal who said she worked on behalf of LaCilento and was “confused and concerned” by some aspects of the trial preparation. It also had dozens of support letters from Fulton’s friends and family.
In Sanna’s counter-filing, he argued that “this wasn’t a close case,” and that there was no way Marshall, nor any other attorney, could prove Fulton’s innocence. He also argued that the decision to testify is always ultimately up to the defendant.
On the phone Friday, Sanna said there were significant problems with Fulton’s try for a new trial, including that Marshall’s motion acknowledges Fulton was the driver, which was corroborated during the trial by DNA evidence, and that he never waived attorney-client privilege.
LaCilento’s sworn declaration in the reply to Marshall’s motion “contains several factual errors, misleading statements and missing information.” LaCilento said he’s represented more than 1,000 criminal cases, which have included suspects accused of murder, attempted murder and sexual assault.
Karen Engels, who became emotional Friday talking about the toll everything has had on her family, said she’s expecting Fulton to appeal.
